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Thursday, March 28, 2013
Top Quant Hedge Funds
Friday, March 22, 2013
Popular Online Brokerage Houses in USA
In the US, following are some of the most popular ones:
a) E*TRade
b) Charles Schwab
c) TD Ameritrade
d) Scottrade
e) OptionsHouse
f) Sharebuilder
g) Fidelity
h) Merrill Edge
i) TradeKing
j) Just2Trade
You can check the image below for some high-level comparison (Taken from Scottrade website)
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Bitcoin Demystified
Bitcoin is a pseudo currency. It was designed by an anonymous person/group of people to bring in efficiency into the financial transaction. Basic idea is to introduce a revolutionary concept of e-money. Bitcoin is a form of virtual currency that has gained some significant traction in the United States. Bitcoins allow anonymous transactions. There are some organizations which accept payments in the form of bitcoins. There are investors who are ready to buy bitcoins from you. The symbol of bitcoin is BTC. The original paper by the creator of bitcoin is available on http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf.
Bitcoins can be mined by using software. There is no clear proof that bitcoin mining is profitable. However, the value of bitcoins has climbed steeply in the past few months. As of today, the bitcoin is trading at about USD 55. This is far more than the prediction given by the most authoritative sources. But not many people seem to know exactly what is going on. But I wouldn't advise anyone to naively buy or try to buy bitcoins from anyone unless you have a proper channel. Of course, there is no harm in trying bitcoin mining. But it will involve significant expenditure in terms of computing power. There are specialized devices available which are known to mine bitcoins in a faster way. Hence, I believe that common personal systems may not be suitable for bitcoin mining.
Latest market capitalization of BTC can be viewed on http://blockchain.info/charts/market-cap
Total bitcoins in circulation can be viewed on http://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins
Some additional recommended sources for reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/06/technology/innovation/bitcoin/index.html
http://fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/html/FIN-2013-G001.html
http://www.weusecoins.com/questions.php
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/bitcoin-questions/
http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/
https://mtgox.com/
Dacoit Menace in Modern India
About 30 odd villages in Raya block of Mat tehsil of Mathura district of Uttar Pradesh have been facing repeated raids from a gang of dacoits since past few months. The gang has about 30-40 people who come in tempos / trucks late in the evening or night.
They carry away women, cattle, jewels, money, clothes ... anything they can lay their hands on. They have killed at least 2 villagers who put up a fight.
Initially they started by raiding houses which were isolated and on the outskirts of villages. Now they have become much more bold. They not only raid houses inside the villages, but even tell householders one day in advance that tomorrow your house will be raided.
The villagers have made any number of complaints to the police, but the police simply refuse to do anything. The first time they had arrested two people, but they were let off within hours. Since then they refuse to even lodge a FIR. They say these are being carried out by a minister in the UP govt and therefore they are helpless to act.
To minimize their losses, the villagers are trying the following:
1. Send all young women away from the village to stay with relatives.
2. Hide all assets in different houses, so that the loss is limited.
3. All male members who live in cities have been told to come back to their villages to help protect them against these dacoits.
This was told to me by one of my service providers who too has decided to go back to his village to protect his family and village.
I had seen such stories in movies, but never thought that such a situation could happen in modern India.
Please help spread the word in the hope that someone somewhere can help these poor villagers.
Source:Som Bhatta on Quora
Friday, December 14, 2012
How to save money and maximize savings
I have been thinking for a while to write some stuff on saving money. I also want to ensure that you are not much affected by being a bit cautious about spending. I don't recommend you to be a miser, but list down some ways to ensure that you save money. The first step to save money is spend less. Each of us has some expenses which are compulsory such as rent, utility bills, telephone bills etc. We also have some non discretionary expenses such as spending on clothes, entertainment, eating out etc. Here are some tips for saving money:
a) If you buy books regularly, you could buy them from a used book store or even better rent them. Don't hesitate to wait fr some time and don't jump to buy books as soon as they are printed.
b) Reduce eating out. As per me, eating out is one of the most common causes of higher expense. You might also eat healthy when you eat home food. Read up how to make great dishes which are also healthy and balanced.
c) Avoid addictions such as tobacco and alcohol. They are great money guzzlers. Once you get rid of them, you reap the benefit of reduced expenses.
d) Avoid upgrading your mobile phones, laptops, Televisions often. There is no point in upgrading them often when the technology is changing every day. As a rule of thumb, if you are not doing something that requires high computing power, laptops, televisions and mobile phones can be used for at least 5 years before any hardware upgrade.
e) Save your money into different products such as Money Market Funds, Equity Funds, Fixed Income, Stocks, Gold etc. Always save first and then plan to spend the remaining.
f) Instead of going to the movies to movie halls, you can choose to watch them on online streaming sites which offer you a legal way to watch great movies at your home.
g) Spend more time exercising and socializing with good people. This keeps you occupied and the urge for spending money is less
h) Use public transport as often as possible. This way, you not only save money for yourself, but also contribute in your own way to the environment.
i) Plan your vacations well in advance and search for good deals on online deal/coupon sites. This helps in saving significant amount.
j) Try not to buy anything on debt. Clear dues well in advance to avoid charges and interest costs.
This is not a money saving tip, but a very important one: Buy a good adequate life insurance and a health insurance plan for you and your family to ensure some safety in case of any unprecedented events.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Top Seed Funds/Angels in India
Mumbai Angels
Current Portfolio: Algorythm, Apalya Technologies, Canavera, eFarm, Hotelogix, Karmic Lifesciences, Myntra etc
Blume Ventures
Current Portfolio:- Trolly, CallRecall, E2E Networks, Mettl, Moneysights, Promptec Renewables, Remma Consulting, Sparsha Learning, SportsNest, Valgen etc
Notable Past Investment- InMobi
Kae Capital
Current Portfolio- CloudByte, HealthKart, Mojo Entertainment
Notable past investment:- Myntra, InMobi, Fractal, Greendust
SeedFund
Current Portfolio:- Afaqs, CarWale, EduSports ,Fetise, Frontier Makets, Healthizen, Heckyl, Ixsight, Jeevanti, Level10 Comics, Lifeblob, myDentist, Nevales Networks, Printo, redBus, RupeeTalk, Sportskeeda, ThinkLabs, Uhuroo, Vaatsalya
YourNest
Current Portfolio:- mycity4kids, Proof of Performance Data Services
Nirvana Ventures
Current Portfolio:- Games2Win, YourNextleap
India Quotient
Current Portfolio:- Engrave, Red Quanta, iimjobs.com, Belita, The App Kiosk
Indian Angel Network
Current Portfolio:-Birds Eye, Peel-Works, GrOffr, Vayavya , Eureka Technology , Hungryzone, InnovizeTech Software, TaxSpanner, Viedea etc
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